I’m super happy with the upgrades. It feels surreal every time I get into the car & it makes me & my family feel even safer than before.
BHPian narayanbabu recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
Guys, I have something really exciting to share. I bought my Tiguan Allspace in December 2019. My detailed ownership review is here.
Like any other self-respecting car owner, before sitting in the drivers’ seat, I went through (thoroughly) my ownership manual/handbook to understand how the car works. As a CBU, the manual was *not* custom printed for India. So, I came across terms like:
- Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)
- Traffic Jam assist
- Blind Spot Assist
- and more
I would learn later that these are *not enabled* in the Indian variant and many of them can be *enabled* easily. I would have to wait for over a year to figure out how to really get this done.
So, here is my experience enabling some advanced features on my Allspace (with the risk of losing warranty/or not), and my experience of using them for over a month.
In Nov 2021, I found someone who could help me with the quest of upgrading my Allspace, for the first round, I chose these features:
- Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)
- Massaging on driver’s seats
- Wireless charging
- TPMS (with pressure levels)
- Auto high beams
None of these involved (major) hardware upgrades. Most of these features involved mostly coding and switching of some components.
TPMS
This was by far the most time consuming and invasive process. [Not sure, if I will recommend, considering the vanity value]. It involved adding a new TPMS module under the boot, pulling the wires all the way to the cockpit and then connecting it. Then taking the car to a tyre shop and putting sensors on all 4 tyres, remembering the serials and coding of the new sensors and setting desired pressure levels for different modes (I chose 32, 34, 36, for Comfort, standard and full load).
It took a good half day to get done end to end, and after everything, the pressures didn’t update for a while and realized it needs a few kms of drive to get calibrated.
Massaging for driver’s seat
This was again a vanity, but something which makes the car really feel posh. I remember seeing this feature for the first time when a friend of mine showed off this in his fancy high-end BMW 2 seater. The process is simple, the car has electronic adjustment for lumbar support, you just swap out the controller, and then configure the 3rd seat preset button to activate massage. When triggered, it massages for 5 mins and then stops. Took 15 mins to swap the controller and add the coding.
Wireless charging pad
Another easy swap (which honestly I feel VW should have included for their top-priced car for India). Involved just pulling out the cover of the storage base (below AC controls) adding a plate below it and connecting it, and putting the cover back. Once coding is done, it will show a nice notification, whenever a phone is kept on the storage, “Qi charging something something…”, another 30 mins job.
Miscellaneous
The guy who helped me code all this added a few miscellaneous tweaks, like Auto high beams, seat adjusting to the right position as we unlock the car and a few other small things. What I missed was enabling closing of boot remotely, which is for some reason disabled from the factory.
Adaptive Cruise Control
This was what it all started with. My quest for enabling ACC, which already has the necessary hardware. The modder gave me an option to switch to a new steering wheel (sporty VW) vs swapping the ACC switch piece on my existing one. Considering the extra 40k price hit, I went for the switch swap. As he inspected the car, also suggested upgrading the radar module, the stock module could only support up to 150kmph, while the new one could do 220kmph. And since the 3rd generation Driving Assist Systems that Tiguan Allspace has, comes with dynamic calibration, swapping out the radar won’t create any issues. For the uninitiated, the radar module hides behind the ceramic VW logo on the front grill.
This was the easy part. The next part involved opening the steering and swapping out the ACC buttons.
This was a tricky process, unlocking the steering from the base, then opening it, and swapping the switches. Was a nervous 90-mins or so. Once this was done, our guy plugged into the CAN port and started coding, after another 60mins or so, installed the license, calibrated everything and it was good to go.
The whole mod affair took almost a full day, and mostly the delay was because of some lack of planning. The car was in our apartment basement, we needed to get it into an open, well-lit place to be able to work on. Then we realized we needed a good internet connection and a power point to connect the laptop. Downloading and backing up the entire firmware took a lot of time, with choppy mobile data and connection drop off. We started in the morning, but the car was ready to be coded only by 6pm. Eventually, everything got done by 1am. Lesson learnt.
Look how the speed is going down as the car in front comes closer.
How is the ACC
So, the whole crux of what I did was to get this one single feature. As soon as our car was ready (at 1am) we left for Chennai (from Bangalore), we were supposed to leave by evening, but since this all took time, we ended up leaving really late.
ACC took maybe around 30 mins to get used to, after that it was bliss! It was almost surreal to the car working its way through the highway with ACC and lane assist. In the beginning, your muscle memory does not let you let the car take control, but over a period you start trusting the car for slowing down and speeding up. [NEVER EVER took this lightly, was still alert all the time].
From Chennai, the next day we went to Trivandrum (another night drive). Along this 1000km+ in the 48 hours, we drove mostly using ACC, and maybe 2-3 times car switched to emergency braking instead of following the vehicle on front. I got a little scared, then realized, at night when there is a truck with no rear lights or even reflectors, the car was not considering it as a vehicle but an obstacle (this is my inference).
The biggest change in the driving post ACC was, we did not drive beyond 90kmph, but still had a very high average speed (55-65). Overall, we were reaching destinations faster, even though the overall drive was relaxed. I was told ACC would bring down mileage, but I attained never been seen mileage ranges post the mod.
After our 1000km+ drive.
Tidbits
- ACC+Lane assist gives *kinda* autonomous driving on highways, but the camera sensor only scans for 20secs, so you get the warning *take control of the steering* after 20 secs. The camera can be upgraded for autonomous driving, and other features like Traffic jam assist, signboard identification etc.
- With the upgrade, the cockpit shows a small car icon, when there is a car in front of you, even when ACC is off, also when ACC is on, the car icon gets closer or farther depending on the distance maintained.
- ACC turns off, during adverse conditions. Driver assist is a very secure system. It turns off when it finds it’s not safe to use. It happened to us once, when the car was in heavy rain. It came back on after a while.
- Wireless charging is very slow, and really not that useful (at least that’s what we found).
Overall, super happy after the upgrades, feels surreal every time I get into the car, and it makes me (and my family) feel even safer (which Tiguan has always made us feel even before).
What’s next
So far I haven’t made any major hardware upgrades, but some items which are on the list are:
- Upgraded ACC cameras for fully autonomous drive and a few missing features mentioned in the manual (traffic jam assist, city drive enhancements). The current sensors do not have the fidelity or precision to handle slow speed or continuous monitoring.
- Blind spot Assist (BLA). Another feature mentioned in the booklet. This involves replacing the side mirrors with BLA lights but also adding side sensors to detect when cars come into the blind spot. This is really useful for our Indian conditions where drivers switch lanes on a whim. I have used this in Volvos and they’re really effective.
- 360 cameras. Something I am not sure if I will do, because of the invasive surgery it requires to add the sensors and cameras and wiring. But, really sour after seeing the 2022 Kodiaq has it!
- Dynamic Chassis Control. The ultimate and most expensive hardware upgrade. Not sure, how effective this will be in terms of driving pleasure, but again Kodiaq 2022 has it, will have to do research, test drive the Kodiaq to get a feeler.
- Discover+ infotainment Another maybe/maybe not item. There is a 9 inch upgraded infotainment unit that supports 3D maps and better gesture controls etc.
Overall, it has been 3 months since I made the upgrades and wanted to share my experience with this awesome community.
Keyword: My VW Tiguan: Adding Adaptive Cruise Control, TPMS & more